Handicapping Rubio: Being a Republican Obama or Clinton is Not a Good Thing in the GOP

Author: Betting Bob

Marco "I sometimes choose to wear high heels" Rubio is the kind of candidate only the media and money-machine can love. Rubio marries the least envied personality and biographical traits of Obama and Clinton, exactly what GOP primary voters do NOT want in their presidential candidate after 16 years of Obama/Clinton rule over the last quarter-decade.  With the kind of lurking scandals that removed him from VP consideration by Mitt "Hide Your Money At The Same Address in the Cayman Islands So Any Schmuck Can Figure Out Its You" Romney, Rubio blends Obama's substance-less, identity-oriented, vague speechifying style with Clinton's scandal-scarred barely masked past. 

Remember this -- when voters experience an opposing party president for two elected terms, they, like someone who just got out of a bad divorce, want a candidate who is the OPPOSITE of what that incumbent two-term president reminds them of. Hence, Democrats chose JFK over LBJ after 8 years of I Like Ike. Hence, Democrats chose Jimmy "Sunday School Teacher" Carter after two elections of Richard Nixon. Hence, Democrats chose revenge-of-the-nerds technocrat Dukakis after two terms of smiling frat boy Hollywood celeb Reagan. Hence, Republicans chose good ole boy, C-student, not-so-slick Dubya after two terms of Oxford scholar, too-smart-for-you-and-too-slick-by-a-lot Clinton. Hence, Democrats chose cool, hip, uber-smart, politically correct, cautious metrosexual Obama after two terms of Dubya. Now, the Republicans want someone who reminds them of everything DIFFERENT from Obama. They want brash, bold, incorrect, old school, no-nonsense, throw-caution-to-the-wind, unscripted, reality tv in-the-moment. All the things Trump is and Rubio isn't.

Worse yet, Rubio emulates Obama, in style and personality. Like Obama, Rubio's all about branding, with his Gary Hart "where's the beef" lack of substance exposed by his own endorsers, who keep stammering hopelessly when asked a single question: name a single accomplishment of Rubio. This from the kind of no-show guy who skipped so many votes, hearings and teaching assignments, he should be an honoree employee of a mob-corrupted union.  All the while vapidly bragging he's the one with "foreign policy" experience and most "ready" to be President. (He read a lot of talking points from his staff, after all, and that should count for something, darn it.) His all-too-obvious anxiety problems -- sweating so bad in debates Trump thought Rubio might have just got out of a swimming pool, diving for a water bottle badly in his response to the state of the union in a moment of Mel Brooks film-worthy comedic anxiety, and his robotic freeze when Christie went all New Jersey on him -- along with that scarily plastic all-teeth smile, render Rubio much too much like a poor man's Obama for any GOP majority or plurality to ever give him the most primary votes over a primary campaign when they don't want anyone who reminds them of Obama in the first place, especially when unfavorably contrasted so often and so easily to Trump. 

But it gets worse. Then, you have Rubio's Clinton-esque rumor mill and investigative inquiries, such as Rubio's Clinton-esque history of dubious overlap between politics and self-enrichment beyond the "golly gee, I accidentally used the party card for my personal expenses again," such as sweetheart loan deals with corrupt bankers busted for fraud, slush-fund style overlap between politics and business, lobbyist ties to land deals while working as a representative, and no-show employment for billionaire backed university professorships, not to mention the part of the American dream he leaves out -- his family's financial rescue from his sister marrying one of the biggest drug dealers in Miami, an original founding member of the Cocaine Cowboys. This doesn't even dip into the documented arrest at a park in his teens for some form of "disorderly" conduct at a park with a dubious reputation and someone with him arrested years later for even more dubious activities, or a wide swath of other Clinton-esque whispers of the kind of activity you don't brag about on Sundays. Even if the money and media machine somehow elevated his chances over an uninformed electorate, it is highly unlikely they would stay uninformed long enough for him to steal a nomination voters have no interest in giving him in the first place. 

Bottom Line: The highest pair of heels can't raise Rubio high enough to win the nomination. 

Odds of a Nominee Rubio: Less than 10%

Betfair Odds: 25%

Recommendation: Sell, sell, sell.